The present invention relates to methods, devices, and systems for enabling a personal cloud-computing environment with ubiquitous mobile access and source-independent, automated data aggregation.
Computing tablets and smartphones are increasingly taking over the role of personal-computing devices. There are many times more mobile phones than Personal Computers (PCs) in use today, and that gap is widening. Households increasingly own more than one computing device; it is not uncommon to see an average household boasting 2 PCs/laptops, 3 or more smartphones, and a tablet (e.g., iPad®).
Mobile devices in recent years have become more advanced computationally, and are becoming a natural repository for personal data such as short movies and Office/PDF documents in addition to the standard content like contacts, calendar, pictures, and music. Continuing with this functional evolution, mobile devices can rapidly become the consumer's comprehensive photo-album, as well as the viewing mechanism for books, television, and even full-fledged feature films.
While technology in mobile devices is quite advanced today, as a technology solution, they still face a number of the same problems that PCs of yesteryear did. As an example, managing personal data and storage capacity effectively on multiple devices, and the ability to find data quickly amongst a plurality of devices when it is necessary, are both problems for which effective solutions don't exist using current technology. It is usually hard to remember which device contains the latest version of a document, or where the picture of a special family occasion from five years ago is actually stored at any given point in time. Also, smartphone and tablet data today is technologically off-limits for any kind of governance—either for business compliance or simply for parental control.
Cloud computing, in which resources are stored and accessed on a distributed network, is becoming a preferred information-technology (IT) solution for data storage. Beside storage, the cloud-computing environment provides expanded access for mobile users. The emergence of a personal cloud in which users can control access and maintain complete privacy is attracting more attention. This would enable a user to benefit greatly from ubiquitous access while ensuring that their data stays completely in their control, and not sent over the Internet to a cloud or storage provider. A personal cloud, which allows automatic aggregation of data from multiple devices, and provides a unified search, while preserving complete privacy and providing access from anywhere, is still not known in the prior art.
It would be desirable to have methods, devices, and systems for enabling a personal cloud-computing environment with ubiquitous mobile access and source-independent, automated data aggregation. Such methods, devices, and systems would, inter alia, overcome the limitations mentioned above.